


the stars are the same (but the view is different)

by chordatesrock



Category: The Branches (Radical Face album)
Genre: Canon Autistic Character, Canon Disabled Character, Female-Centric, Gen, Happy Ending, Mother-Daughter Relationship, One Shot, POV Female Character, POV First Person, Post-Canon, Reconciliation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-13
Updated: 2014-12-13
Packaged: 2018-03-01 07:05:05
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,988
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2764109
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/chordatesrock/pseuds/chordatesrock
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>There are people who can hear the only words that she knows. And then there are the people who can't, but listen anyway.  (or: She doesn't know where home is, but she goes home anyway.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	the stars are the same (but the view is different)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Hannah](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Hannah/gifts).



The stars are different here, compared to what I remember. That’s what they say. That’s what I say, too. But it’s wrong. The stars are the same; that faraway one was called Alpha Centauri, and that one is the one they called the Sun, the one that was theirs. The stars are the same. I shouldn’t have thought coming here would fix things.

But the view is different.

I watch the stars. I watch the Sun sometimes. Here they don’t call it the Sun. Here they call something else the Sun. But the Sun is the same even when they call it the tip of the Knight’s Sword, part of the same constellation as Alpha Centauri. It’s the same, except I see it in the night, not the day. It’s the same. I just moved.

I get up. It’s too chilly to stay out here, even in two coats, with my hood up and a scarf over my face. Not a white scarf. The white scarf is retired. I keep it in the drawer with my clothes. It’s too threadbare to wear anymore. But I keep it.

I reach my house now. I built a lot of it myself. It shows. There are crystals hanging from each corner of the roof. I put them there. The doorknob is made of plastic. He’s an elephant. Yellow. He remembers the house and the beach and the box. He remembers the house that wasn’t home and Mom and Dad who weren’t my family. He remembers. So I made him into my doorknob.

There’s a letter. Someone left it on the ground in front of the door. Someone asked me for specs for a teleporter that can take more than one person at a time. I read the letter. It can’t be done. It’s not about size or power. It can’t be done. I take a pencil out of my bag and write “sorry” on the letter, and leave it there.

I go inside. I eat. It’s a fruit they don’t have a name for on Earth. Maybe it doesn’t grow there. I don’t remember. I was so young.

I sleep. I wake up. I step outside. Yesterday’s letter is gone. There’s a gift for me. I can see it’s wrapped in paper I haven’t seen in years. Maybe decades. However long it’s been. I peel the tape off carefully. Scotch tape. I haven’t seen that since my first teleporter worked. I unfold the paper, as close to undamaged as I can keep it. It knows. It’s been there, in the place I mistakenly called home, more recently than I have. It’s been there. It’s from there. I want to see something from there. It doesn’t feel so bad to see things. To feel things. To be with things. It doesn’t feel as bad as being there did.

The stars are the same, but the view is different.

I find a box inside. A shoebox. Smooth, black-and-white cardboard, with smooth curves and sharp angles spelling out a brand name in fancy calligraphy, made to look strong and aerodynamic and ready to move. I run my hands over the edges between the faces of the box, over the corners and the place where the top of the box gives way to the bottom. Then I take everything inside.

I lay the wrapping paper out flat on the table. Christmas. It’s red, with Santa and Santa and Santa and Santa and Santa, over and over again, always exactly the same. I smile beneath my scarf. The times they came closest to me, the times I came closest to them, the times it seemed like we could almost be a family, were when we were being Santa. When we were getting each other things. When we were sneaking around, when we kept our gift-getting secret. When we stood back and let the gifts speak for themselves. Before and after, I always knew I didn’t fit and never would, but when we were Santa, I wondered.

I take the lid off the box. I smell the air from Earth. Full of hope. Desperate hope. Despair. Fear and horror. And hope. And the handful of less-important treasures I didn’t carry with me when I left. I take them out of the box one by one. Spider-Man and King Kong. A pebble; I’m not sure what kind. A calcite crystal. A metallic-looking, silver rock. Childhood friends. They have the old memories. Then they have other memories. They’re the same, but they’re older. They’re the same, but we’ve grown apart. The view is different.

At the bottom of the box, a letter. A letter from home, I bet they call it. I pull my scarf up. Sometimes I leave it down now, when I’m alone, but not now. Now I pull it up over my face, and my hood up over my hair, so only my eyes show now. I remember. I pick up the letter. I read. It’s from Mom. It’s not to me. It’s to a lost girl with my name. It’s to the girl she looked for. She always looked for someone else. So she never saw me. She saw a third person, not me, not who she wanted. She kept looking for the one she wanted.

I feel a lump in my throat. She kept looking. She’s still looking. She’s still looking, but she’ll never find the girl she’s looking for because that girl doesn’t exist. I take in a shaky breath. Then I let it out, nice and slow. My scarf catches some of the warmth and humidity.

I read.

She wants to know if I’m okay. She wants me to know she wants me happy wherever I am. And she misses me. How can she miss me? She never knew me. Never.

I remember.

I remember a woman not quite old yet, but getting there. I remember brown hair and pain and pain and pain, and eyes I couldn’t stand to see. I remember. But that’s not her anymore. She’s old. She has to be. I was just a kid then, and I haven’t been a kid in years.

So I can lie. It’s not even a lie. It’s just letting her see what she wants to see. I turn the letter over. The back page is blank. I write: “Hi, Mom and Dad. I’m an engineer now.” They’ll read: I’m successful, I’m what they want. I’ll walk down to the post office myself. This is important. I’ll mail it.

I look over the wrapping paper, now weighed down by my things. I remember Santa. I miss Santa.

I don’t go to the post office. I write a note and leave it on my door: “traveling, be back soon”. Every word comes hard, but writing them is easier than saying them.

I remember the old star map. The first one. I go to my teleporter, the one I keep in the living room because why not. I set it. This time where I started is where I want to end up, and where I ended up is where I’m starting.

I put on another coat. I put on my boots. I put on the thicker gloves, not the thin ones I usually wear. I stick the collapsible teleporter in my pocket. Then I go into the other one.

Then I’m gone.

Then I’m on Earth. I realize I forgot the letter. I’ll have to actually visit them now. I’ll have to see them. I’ll have to talk to them. I hate talking.

I see the beach. I remember the beach. The beach is the same but the view is different. I walk down. I stand right where I used to. I look out at the ocean. Like I used to. The ocean is the same. The view is still different.

I find the house. I remember people used to move. I hope they haven’t. I hope they’re still there. Also, I hope they’re gone. I don’t want to see them. But I’ll go find them if they’re not here. I have to. They’re getting old now. They miss someone. I can be that someone.

I find the house. I glance to my left. I remember where I used to sit. I could sit there again. But the house next door has been repainted. Even if I don’t look at it, the view would be different.

I walk up to the door. I ring the doorbell. I look through the window. Mom comes into view. Her hair is turning gray. There’s a lot that’s familiar. The empty place where she won’t think about me too much. The pain because she still does sometimes. I’ve seen it all before. Me being there was a lot like me being gone. I don’t meet her eyes when she answers the door.

“I’m an engineer now,” I say. My voice rings loud in my own head. Every word exacts a price. It’s not so big a price, for four words. But keep going and it adds up. I know I sound like those people in the special class. I know she’ll hate my voice.

She doesn’t hate it. She puts a hand over her mouth. Then she tries to hug me. I back away. Faster this time than I used to. I’m not numb anymore. What I hate I hate.

“Come in,” she says. “Can you stay? How are you? Are you okay? Do you want to come home?”

I shrug. I follow her inside.

“Are you staying for dinner?” she asks.

I shrug again. She goes back to the kitchen. She gets out a bowl and a spoon. She takes them to the table where there’s another bowl and another spoon waiting. Only one of each. Now two of each. The house feels empty. Mom feels empty. I’m sorry. I know I couldn’t have made it work here, but I’m sorry. I don’t know if it would have been worse otherwise. I hope so. I hope this was for the best.

I was wrong. I was wrong, I was wrong, I was so wrong. They didn’t start a new life without me. They didn’t forget. Mom didn’t forget. I don’t know about Dad. But Mom… she didn’t forget. I want to scream. She can’t see it. She can’t see it on my face. I feel myself going numb, callused, like before. I feel everything pressing in on me. Trying to rub me raw. My coats are like moleskin blister dressings. They’re not enough. Nothing could be enough.

She brings a saucepan of soup to the table, with a ladle. “Lucky I made extra,” she says.

She fills both bowls.

“I didn’t know you’d stay in this house,” I say. Eight words. Plus four. Twelve. Twelve today.

“I wanted you to be able to find us if you came back,” she says. But by “us” she just means her. Dad isn’t here.

“Where’s Dad?” I ask. Fourteen. I see her reaction before she answers. He abandoned her.

“He had a job opportunity in another state, but one of us had to stay here to wait for you.”

I don’t react in any way she can see. I react. She doesn’t see.

“So, how are you? Where are you living? Your friend said you were on another planet.”

I nod.

“I believe you,” she says. “I saw you disappear, so I’ll believe just about anything.”

I nod again.

“How is it?” she asks. “The other planet, I mean. Do you like it there?”

I nod. I stare down at my soup. I wonder how I’m going to eat it. I can’t just take off my scarf. I won’t pull it up over my eyes like I used to. That’s something I’ll only do at home. I had to treat this place like home, but it isn’t. It never was. But if it was, it still isn’t now. The place is the same, but the view is different.

“I’m sorry, no matter how hard I try, I never understand. I’m so sorry,” she says. “I wish you’d let me get to know you… but sometimes I wonder if you haven’t already tried, and I never noticed.”

I nod at this, too. I don’t think what she wants is possible. I used to wish it were. Then I stopped wishing. It isn’t. I can live with that. Except now my chest aches like it never does anymore. I feel more lonely than I do alone under the sky. I feel more lonely than I do with only the stars and the rocks and the trees and the grass for company. I feel more lonely than I do when I don’t see anyone for days on end. Talking to her, I feel like we’re on opposite sides of a sheet of glass. I never feel this way when I exchange letters and gifts and schematics with people, never seeing them. But I do sitting next to her. I do talking to her.

It hurts.

“Will you try again?” she asks. She thinks she’s a terrible mother. Maybe she is. I never wanted her to feel that way.

I nod. I’ll try again.

I will do this.

I pull my scarf down. My face is exposed. I eat my soup. She’s almost never seen my face exposed before. I turn away a little. It’s not enough. But I eat my soup. She eats hers. I finish mine first.

I want to find words she’ll understand. But I can’t. I try what I’ve tried before. I try what she’s never understood before.

I quote John Denver: “The children and the flowers are my sisters and my brothers.”

Twenty-five words, but eleven of them not so hard as the rest.

“I… don’t understand,” she says. “Can you say that another way?”

I shake my head. “Forget it,” I say.

“Please. Please, I’m trying to understand. I really am,” she says.

“I know,” I say. Twenty-nine. I’ve paid for every one of them. I have more left in me. I won’t borrow tomorrow’s words. I don’t need to. “Forget it. Before…” I look for words and find them. Words that will sound like poetry. Maybe they are. Poetry is different from trying to say things normally. “I bit my tongue. Lived life on tiptoes. Only at peace if by myself, when mistakes don’t count.” I don’t say what else comes to mind. I’m nothing they want, but I don’t say so. Mom doesn’t know what I am. She can’t see it. She still thinks I’m something else. She doesn’t know what anymore. But something.

“What? But why?” she says.

Now I do say it. “There’s a hole in my chest,” I say, “from the time I was born.” I’ve thought these words before, and they come easily. “I’m nothing you want.”

“I do want you,” she says.

I shake my head. “You can’t see me,” I say. “I’m invisible.” Seventy-one. It’s up there, but I’m not at my limit yet. I’m not anywhere near it yet.

“Is that why you ran away?” she asks.

I shrug. It would be too hard to tell her. Or maybe it wouldn’t. I’ll try. “Yes. And. Maybe you could have a new life. A life of your own.”

“Without you,” she says. She shakes her head and lets out a breath. I don’t look her in the eye but I know tears are forming. They’ll spill soon. Maybe. But not yet. “That’s not what I want. I want you in my life.”

I shake my head. I have to make her see. I don’t know how. I don’t know how. The place is like sandpaper against my skin. I try again anyway. “I’ve tried to show you but you can’t see.”

“I’m so sorry I haven’t understood,” she says. “Please believe me when I say I’ve tried. I don’t understand you most of the time, but that doesn’t mean I don’t love you and want you in my life.”

Ninety-four so far. I’ll try a few more. “You think you want me but you want me to make sense. You want me to talk. You wanted me to play with other kids. You want me to be with you. You want me to dress like a normal person. You say you want me but you don’t want _me_.”

I feel it when comprehension dawns. I hear it in her breathing. She understands now. She understands why she doesn’t want me. She doesn’t know who I am but now she knows I’m not someone she wants.

“I want you in my life,” she says. “ _You_. You are brilliant and imaginative and inventive, and you built a working teleporter from a cardboard box and a spring when you were only nine. You started a new life on another planet on your own when you were only a child and you’ve survived this whole time. I am so proud of you, and I am in awe of you, and I want _you_ in my life. You. Not the child I thought I wanted before I had you.”

I want it to be true. The words sink in. This is still my mom. I’m still me. But somehow the gulf between us isn’t as big.

“I had to go,” I say. “You couldn’t have wanted me.”

“But I do want you,” she says.

“I hear you. But you didn’t want me then.”

“Will you stay?” she asks.

I smile. It’s a lie. It’s also the truth. I give her a fake smile so she can see what I really feel. “I’ll visit,” I say.

I help get the dishes into the dishwasher. I don’t ask about Dad. I promise again to visit. I tell her yes, I got her letter. Yes, it’s why I came.

When I leave, I shake her hand and don’t flinch. It’s all I’ll offer. I see that it’s enough.


End file.
